


Flying Blind

by Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, Post-Episode: s10e05 Oxygen, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 08:24:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13947654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw/pseuds/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw
Summary: Bill decides the Doctor needs cheering up and offers to act as his wingperson. They both get lucky.Beta by imaginary_golux and infinite_regress.





	Flying Blind

**Author's Note:**

> I dunno, I'm just a sucker for these two being bros and trawling for chicks.

The Doctor plucks at his guitar, face cloudy with concentration. He fails to notice the tap on his office door or the small footsteps behind him.

“You okay in there, Doctor?” Bill asks. “Because you don’t look okay. I mean, not that I’m not one to judge.”

“Okay in where?” the Doctor replies, perplexed. “My office? Perfectly comfortable.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you’re thick on purpose.” Bill taps him on the side of the head, a teasing grin on her face. “I mean up here.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” His face is carefully blank.

“I’d call it women’s intuition, but you launched into a major digression on gender essentialism during your last lecture.” The lecture was supposed to be on art in the Byzantine. As you do. “So let’s just say that I know you pretty well by now.” He misses the flash of her grin.

“You’re teasing me.”

“Nope.”

“I really am fine, Bill.”

“Not buying it. _You_ ,” she drums on his desk, “need a night out. A little drinking, a little music. Maybe getting laid.” She stops, silent for a moment. “Not, you know, that I want to picture my space grandpa getting it on.”

“What about your bro?” the Doctor asks in a hopeful burr. “We could be bros.” He contemplates this. “I’d like that, I think.”

Bill grins and laughs indulgently. “Yeah! Yeah, we can be bros. Let’s go, space bro.”

???

Bill lets the Doctor pick the club they go to, because, seriously, there are only so many queer-friendly joints in Bristol. Let alone that wouldn’t be weird to take a professor to. Also crazy space booze and making it with hot alien chicks? Fuck yes.

Come to think of it… “Doctor?” His head swivels absently towards her. “What’s on the menu for tonight? Men? Ladies? Robots?”

“Empathetic, brave, strong sense of humor. Likes rock ballads, hates pears.” He shrugs. “The usual.”

“Whatever you say, Doctor. Anyway, let me know if you spot anyone who flies your fancy.” She flashes a pair of finger guns at him as she sets to the prowl.

???

Bill makes a couple passes at a couple of girls. Nothing too successful, but it’s nice to have new people to flirt with. Her attempts to find someone to share a drink with the Doctor have been equally unsuccessful. At least the beer is good, and cheap. 

The tap on her shoulder catches her by surprise. “You having any better luck?” She asks as he settles into the chair opposite her.

“At your seven o’clock. Don’t look. There are two brunettes. One of them has large brown eyes, dark hair, tan complexion. I need you to distract her friend.” The Doctor’s voice has more urgency than Bill would have expected given his earlier ambivalence; maybe he’d needed to get laid way worse than he’d let on.

Bill sneaks a covert peek over her left shoulder. “Not going to be a hardship.” She struts up to her target, who either looks past her or through her as she approaches. “Hey,” she waves, “I would love to dance with you.” 

The shortest of the three women bites a pale lip, her eyes worried under boy-short dark hair. “I shouldn’t…”

“Go on,” the Doctor’s mark laughs. “I’ll be fine for one dance.” 

???

The Doctor circles around the table as Bill runs interference for him brilliantly. He waits until she laughs at them to go, then darts from his position behind a Judoon bouncer to join her at the table.

“Awfully forward of you to sit down without an invitation,” she probes.

“No telling what I might do, then,” the Doctor counters. “I suppose this is the part where I should offer you a drink, but I think we’ll want our wits about us.” Especially since he hadn’t exactly planned any of this. But now that he was here...Time Lords may have invented gravity, but there was no resisting her pull.

“I’m...sorry… Have we...met?” His hearts clench at the effort it takes her to force out the words through unbroken calm. Her eyelids flutter with the strain.

“You know, I get around quite a bit. We may have done so. Maybe at another dining establishment.” Her cheeks pucker in as she inhales--purely reflex at this point, he knows.

“Y-yes,” and a tear wells up in her eye as she stutters. “And w-why are you here?” She forces a smile, that familiar painful one. “Can’t just be to see little old me.”

“Oh, you never know,” he manages airily. “You may have made quite the impression.” If only she knew, he thinks.

“I-I would have thought that impression would have faded.” Her eyes are searching his. To no avail: his sunglasses block the view completely.

“You might be surprised.” The Doctor lies, he reminds himself, and this is getting too close to the truth.

“I had a-a friend once. He was very good at surprising me.” The tear spills over and down her cheek. She brushes it away with a practiced motion that looks very nearly like she is fixing her hair.

“Good surprises? Or bad?”

“Usually they were good surprises. But sometimes,” her eyes harden, “I wasn’t so sure.”

“Sounds like an interesting sort.” 

“You could say that.” Her palm brushes away another teardrop. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we have anything else to say to each other.” He could let her go there. He should let her go. Let her leave and never come back. 

His hand shoots out and captures her wrist. “I had a friend, too.” His voice is low, quavering. “She once said that people like us, with friends like us, should say things to each other.” She stares at him. She knows. He knows. She knows that he knows. He braces for the slap just before it comes. A second of silence: she waves away the Judoon, and he waits for what’s next.

???

Clara smiles as she watches Ashildr dance with her new friend, and she catches the shadow in the corner of her eye as it pulls out a chair, and starts talking before she sees who it is. “Awfully forward of you to sit down without an invitation,” she tells whoever it is.

No. He can’t be… She freezes. 

“No telling what I might do, then,” says the stranger wearing the Doctor’s body, the Doctor’s coat, the Doctor’s glasses. “I suppose this is the part where I should offer you a drink, but I think we’ll want our wits about us.” 

“I’m...sorry… Have we...met?” Pull it together, Oswald, she tells herself. Just a handsome stranger. No reason to lose your cool. Her eyes flicker half-closed while she gathers herself.

“You know, I get around quite a bit. We may have done so. Maybe at another dining establishment.” Her lungs draw in dead air. He can’t mean the Diner. How much has he figured out, her clever boy?

“Y-yes,” Clara says, cursing her stammer for failing her. Wasn’t as though the fate of the galaxy (and her unbeating heart) wasn’t hanging in the balance. “And w-why are you here?” Just play it coy, she commands herself, willing her voice to be light and playful. “Can’t just be to see little old me.” She almost misses it--the little ghost that dances across his face when she says the word ‘see’--but when she sees it, everything else falls into place. The sunglasses despite the dark bar; the way he doesn’t quite meet her eyes. She almost jumps up to see if true love’s kiss will cure him. Fresh emotion floods through her, and she can feel the tears starting to well up again.

“Oh, you never know,” he offers, reclining. “You may have made quite the impression.” 

She stammers with surprise as much as anything. Was he suggesting--no, even he couldn’t be that callous. “I-I would have thought that impression would have faded.” She searches for answers in his eyes, any flicker of recognition.

“You might be surprised.” 

“I had a-a friend once. He was very good at surprising me.” 

“Good surprises? Or bad?”

“Usually they were good surprises.” Show me the stars, she thinks, and oh god, is she falling in love with this stranger? “But sometimes, I wasn’t so sure.” But then, without the darkness, could she see the stars?

“Sounds like an interesting sort.” The little note of hope in his voice slays her. No, she can’t do this anymore. For the universe, she can’t do this. Because even with his memories of her scraped away like old paint, the man she loves is still unscathed underneath.

“You could say that.” She dries one last tear for the man she is about to lose one last time, the man she prays has forgotten her. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we have anything else to say to each other.” She slides back in her chair, stopping only when he seizes her wrist.

“I had a friend, too.” No, he can’t mean her, he can’t mean-- “She once said that people like us, with friends like us, should say things to each other.” Her free hand shoots out and slaps him across the face like some wild creature that’s shed its leash.

???

“How _dare_ you?” she hisses in his ear. “How dare you sit there like none of this means anything to you, like this is some puzzle to solve, just letting me sit there, trying to keep up this charade when you _knew_! When you remembered all along! When you couldn’t even see me and I just had to pretend this wasn’t ripping me apart. How _dare_ you!” She glares at him, breathing heavy with anger and...something else?

“Clara Oswald,” he says, removing his sunglasses to reveal unseeing eyes, “when do I not see you?” His memory supplies the baffled look on her face before she closes the distance between them and presses her lips to his.

“We need to take this someplace else,” she breathes in his ear. “Unless you’re willing to brave the Hybrid for one frustrating conversation.” He nods wordlessly, her body heavy against his. 

???

One dance turns into four, and Bill learns Ashildr’s name, the way she smells of cloves and leather layered over her own musk. The way she dances, fists unclenching only to close again around Bill’s jacket and pull her closer as they grind against each other. The way she sings along with languages Bill can’t follow even with the TARDIS chanting along in her head. The way her top slides to leave one tantalizing shoulder bare, a shoulder Bill toys with for a whole wailing chorus. The way her head tips back, just before Bill kisses her, hot and mean and wet and fast. 

“Shit,” Ashildr mutters into Bill’s shoulder. “Should make sure my friend’s okay. Come along if you like.”

“Sure,” Bill says, because she’s awkwardly crushing on this girl she’s known for twenty minutes.

When they get back, the table is empty. “Probably just went to the loo,” Bill offers helpfully.

“Doubt it,” Ashildr mutters dryly. “She’s not the--” She sucks in air, because you don’t get to be a million years old without being a little suspicious. “Who did you come here with?”

“Just a friend of mine. My best friend,” she amends. “We travel together.”

“An old Scottish guy,” Ashildr surmises. “Shit.” She cranes her neck to little avail. “We’ve got to find them, and luckily, I have an idea.” 

“Where are you going? Why is this important?”

Ashildr judges her words and metes them out carefully. “They aren’t safe together.”

Bill snorts. “The Doctor’s not safe by himself. Don’t see how your friend could make things worse.”

“You’d be surprised how much trouble they can get into.”

???

Clara takes the Doctor’s hand and leads him back and up. “I rented a room,” she explains. “Just needed to do a little surveillance. So it isn’t the most comfortable.”

He drops onto the bed anyway. “I’ve been in nicer dungeons.” Anxious fingers tug at the laces of his boots. “Usually they aren’t trying to get my kit off, though.”

“I’ve missed you. Badly.” Two thunks and two clicks as her shoes join his boots, discarded on the floor. “How did?..” The mattress shifts as she joins him in bed, and she brushes a thumb along his eyebrow.

“Vacuum exposure,” he explains candidly. He removes his sunglasses and sets them on the nightstand. “The sonic sunglasses help. Still working on a more permanent solution.”

“I’m sorry you can’t see me.”

“I’m not. I needed to do it to help a friend. And I remember you. Perfectly.” 

“You remembered me? All this time?...”

“Torture. But if it kept you safe…” He shrugs, is surprised his shoulder blades don’t clack against the headboard. Breath, hot on his lips, then her own, soft and eager; her tongue parting his chapped lips in desperation. He raises one hand to the back of her neck, tangles it in chestnut hair and nervous sweat.

“Doctor, I…” Her words trail off, strangled in the thick air between them. He can see her pupils, dilated, locked on his. He nods the answer to her question, and lets her hungry fingers strip the clothes from his body like the meager flesh from his bones. 

He shivers when she slides away from him, the cool air consuming him. “That was quick,” he murmurs as she settles back on top of him.

“No point in showing off,” she teases, and places his hands on her body. He is on unfamiliar territory now; has no idea what color the mole on her waist is, or the sensitive nipple he catches between his teeth. She sucks in air, her lips by the crown of his head, as he explores the wonder of her body. Does she have freckles on her shoulders? Is there a tattoo above the curve of her bum? He tastes her, flicking the tip of his tongue over her nipple, breathing heated breath over it.

“We haven’t much time,” she whispers into grey curls, and one hand finds its way between them to where she is soaking and sweet and eager, and guides him up and in... 

???

“No, not yet,” Clara gasps as the door creaks open. Ashildr coughs. Bill covers her eyes and retches an excuse.

“Honestly, you two.” Ashildr crosses her arms as the other two immortals hastily dress. “I can’t take you anywhere anymore, Clara.”

“Couldn’t have waited another five minutes,” Clara mutters. “At least give us a bit of privacy till we dress.”

“No funny business,” she says, wagging a stern finger. “Take that however you’d like.”

“You weren’t kidding about them getting into trouble,” Bill jests as the door half-closes. “Never really wanted to see the Doctor in his birthday suit...though I get the sense that wasn’t the tragedy you were trying to prevent.”

“It’s complicated.” Ashildr frowns. “The entire Web of Time is implicated.”

“Wicked! Tell me about it some time; I know this place that makes baklava to die for.”

Ashildr’s face softens. “I really shouldn’t do this but...has he given you the mobile phone upgrade yet?”

Bill blushes in a way that tries to say the opposite of “Yes, but I immediately used it to drunk-text Mary Shelley” and fails. Instead she grins as she punches in Ashildr’s digits.

“What are you two up to?” Clara asks suspiciously as she steps out into the hallway.

“Just a little girl talk,” Ashildr lies. Clara stares at her, nose crinkled before caving and waving goodbye to Bill. And then, as they are leaving, she turns and winks at Bill, patting her back pocket--a corner of what Bill recognizes as psychic paper sticks out. Bill grins back and flashes her a low double thumbs-up. 

???

The Doctor comes out a moment later, rifling through a stack of notecards. (He has them memorized, but it’s the thought that counts.) He clears his throat. “I apologize for encountering you while I was in an intimate-slash-undressed-slash-compromising position.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. Sorry I broke in on you like that.” The corners of her mouth tug irresistibly upward. “Still bros?”

“The best of bros,” the Doctor confirms. “How, ah, was your evening?”

“Other than too much undressed granddad? Promising. You?”

“Promising,” he echoes and agrees. He pats the breast pocket where the matching piece of psychic paper rests, already mulling over coordinates. “TARDIS?”

“Definitely TARDIS.” 


End file.
